Occupational health risk assessment and control of fugitive emissions in chemical processes

Abstract

Fugitive emissions are unavoidable and unanticipated releases can occur throughout a process plant wherever there are discontinuities or seals between the process fluids and the external environment. Despite being small in comparison to stack emissions, fugitive emissions can pose a significant hazard as it involves thousands of sources in a chemical plant (mostly from piping equipment and fittings) and the emissions occur continuously. Efforts to address the problem of fugitive emissions have mostly been driven by environmental concerns since emissions such as volatile organic compounds are an important source of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Besides the environmental impact, fugitive emissions are also considered as the main source of background exposure of workers to harmful chemical substances in chemical plants. Continuous, daily exposure to such emissions may pose a serious threat to the health of the workers. Therefore, this study focuses on dealing with fugitive emissions from the occupational health risk perspective. The main aim of this study is to develop a hybrid framework for assessing fugitive emissions health risk by integrating the concepts of Layers of Protection, Source-Path-Receptor and Hierarchy of Control. To achieve this purpose, this project proposes a new approach of adopting the Layer of Protection (LoP) technique together with the concept of Source-Pathway-Receptor (SPR) for assessing and controlling the occupational health risk due to emissions in chemical plants. This paper presents the concept of the proposed approach that has been developed during the initial stage of this study.